February 1, 2008

During the first week of clinic I saw quite a few Hearing Aid Checks. One of the client's was a man I followed all of last semester. He came in because he felt that his hearing had changed about two weeks before. He said that it had gotten worse, but was starting to get better. The client said he may have had a mini-stroke. We did a quick pure tone air conduction threshold search and found that his thresholds in the low frequencies had changed 20-35 dB HL. Due to the significant change, we recommended that he seek immediate medical attention.

I wanted to find an article related to stroke and hearing loss. I found an article about sudden deafness as a sign of stroke with normal diffusion-weighted brain MRI. Obviously, we do not perform the MRI; however, if a client were to come in with sudden deafness or a sudden change in hearing, as this client did, we would refer them to a PCP and they may request an MRI be completed. In this article, they stated that sudden deafness is typically caused by a viral inflammation of the labyrinth, if there are no associated neurological signs and symptoms. This study was based on a 60 year old man who had hypertension and the acute onset of sudden deafness and vertigo. After a brain MRI, they felt the sudden deafness with vertigo may have been a heralding manifestiation of a pontocerebellar infarction.


Reference:
Yi, H., Lee, S., Lee, H., Ahn, B., Park, B., & Whitman, G. (2005). Sudden deafness as a sign of stroke with normal diffusion-weighted brain MRI. Acta Oto-laryngologica (125) 1119-1121.

If you would like to read this article, please go to the following link:
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdf?vid=5&hid=115&sid=1ecfa2f9-75bb-401d-8929-1949019a5180%40sessionmgr102